Too many Tokens

[BSkenes]

Sorry to all. I must be in a bad mood today or I would have reaized that people are just trying to help. Please put it down to inexperience with the medium (posting). I am more used to the give and take of normal conversation. I have been a carwash operator for 18 years and have only recently discovered this forum. There are about a dozen self serves in our market and I know the operators of almost all. Only one other operator here even subscribes to The Self Service Car Wash News and none are active on this forum. Several of us are in a little card game that plays regularly at my house and last night I pulled up the forum and this thread for all to see. Like me, they were all very interested but still kind of mystified. We had more questions than answers after reviewing all the comments. For instance; what is a MA800? This thread has several references to it and everyone seems to know. None of us knew and when I Googled it, I came up with underwater speakers. That doesn't seem right.I am going through all this long explanation to please ask that you experienced guys on this forum might show a little compassion to new posters who don't know the jargon. Again, sorry Bill (assuming pitzerwm is "Bill" but how would new people know that) and MEP001 for the name calling. You are right, there is no excuse for that. Now back to the question. We have GinSan Sensotrons in the wash bays and mechanical acceptors in the vacs and vends. I was hoping that there was a better electric acceptor that the Sensotron that would distinguish the nickel coating but it appears that is not the case.

 

[MEP001]

I would assume you're getting a lot of bogus tokens in your vacs; because they're mechanical they work strictly on the size of the coin and don't care what it's made of. The Sensortron can distinguish different metal contents of the same size, but they do have to be very different in metal content to get a good separation. If someone else has the same size and metal content token, the plating on yours won't be enough for any acceptor to tell yours from the others.

The MA800 is an IDX brand acceptor. Kleen-Rite sells it with their own label under the same part number, probably the cheapest place you'll find it, but if you're taking just one token and no U.S. currency you don't need such an expensive acceptor. The Slugbuster II single-coin is a good one, it's reliable and fairly inexpensive and (despite what the manual says) does a good job of distinguishing different types of tokens especially of different size. If you want to stay with your current token, try one and keep a close eye on what it's taking, see whether you get any bad tokens or not.

You may still consider a smaller token as mentioned earlier, or change to a token with a different metal content than you have now. Parker (who makes the Slugbuster) uses a .984 plated token that's pretty specific to car washes. Maybe they'll send you a handful to try to see if you can get a good separation, but you'll eventually have to put electronic acceptors in your vacs.

 

[Randy]

A couple of years ago I was getting hit pretty hard. I kept calling the Police nothing was happening. One day I called and the Police chief showed up in a unmarked car, no gun, no badge, I didn’t know it was the Chief. He was acting like a real smart A$$ SOB so I ripped into him like a Marine Gunny at boot camp, called him everything I could think. All he could say was “I don’t the way you’re talking to me” when I asked him who he was he told me “I’m the Chief of Police” I then ripped into him again and I was PI$$Ed!!! And so was he. When I told him that I was going to call the local news stations and he would be answering to them he decided that it was time to get the boys off there butts and do there jobs. I call the Police for everything now, I had them at my wash 18 times last year. I do have to admit they are pretty useless. I’d call the news media if I didn’t get any action from the police.

I can’t believe that someone who has been in the car wash business 18 years doesn’t know what a MA-800 coin acceptor is or doesn’t subscribe to Self serve car wash news. I suppose you’ve never been to a Car Wash convention, yes they do have them a couple of times a year. There isn’t a coin acceptor made to do what you’re wanting to do. The Nickel coating has nothing to do with the base metal that the coin acceptor is looking at. The only thing you can do is replace your tokens and coin acceptors. Before you jump into anything you need to do a tremendous amount of home work. Find out who using tokens in your area and get some of there tokens so you don’t buy the same token they are using. A smaller token wouldn’t be a bad idea if you don’t want to buy new coin acceptors. I’d go with a token that is valued at a Dollar. The token Slugbuster uses is a nickel plated .984 85/15 very common token.